~ Starbright ~
Salem doesn't have a jewel on her forehead, just a small black scar where her starbright should be located. Her minions notice, but they fear to ask.
She can see the questions in their eyes, whenever a new one meets her face-to-face for the first time. Did it get broken, or had it been removed somehow? Did she never have one? Is she even human?
Then comes the day that Cinder brings a silver-haired boy home. His gaze flicks over her face but doesn't linger on that small black line. He is not the first of her followers to come to her broken, but he is the first to arrive knowing this particular wound.
Without thinking, she reaches a hand out toward him, sure that under the shaggy bangs she will find a similar scar. He ducks away from the touch, backing up several quick steps with his hands raised in front of him in the 'surrender' position.
"Sorry," he says, not sounding apologetic in the least, "but I don't like being touched."
She lets her hand drop to her side.
He tilts his head - not dramatically, but enough to shift his hair away from the center of his forehead, revealing his own scar.
"I won't ask you to explain," she says.
To which he replies, "I wouldn't anyway, even if you did."
At some point during his torment, he had lost all hope of anyone ever being able to love him. The next time he'd looked at himself in a mirror, his starbright had already shriveled up and disappeared, leaving only a small black scar behind. What event led up to that... she doesn't want to know. She already has to live with her own memories.
~oOo~